Keep My Wife’s Name Out Your Mouth
Raise your hand if glorified violence has been the lifeblood of your industry…Don’t be shy Hollywood.
While the Oscars continue balancing its sliding scale of justice, sorting out just what they can cook up for Will Smith I find myself waiting with interest. A solid guess would be that they get just the right amount of press to absolve them of admitting the Oscars are still on a dangerous precipice of cultural emaciation; meanwhile Chris Rock sits up taking it all in while he watches his tour ticket price jump like pandemic Bitcoin. Rock will probably do his damndest to tear down his comedy set using the most viral live TV material since Kanye West broke the very exclusive story that George Bush, in fact, doesn’t care about black people. He’s a comedic genius. It’s what he does, but what about right now? A room full of half aghast half applauding Hollywood elites were so listless, so lost at sea in the waters of unknown public consensus, they both admonished Smith and hoisted him above thousands in celebration. Their Best Actor of 2022 thought, even if just for a brief moment, that someone repeatedly using his wife as the butt of a joke was “Deeper than Rap”: That it superseded the bounds of whatever art pact the room was beholden to. While simultaneously feeling for Chris and Will, I laughed out loud at the slack-jawed stupor that swept the room. It’s interesting that a Hollywood kum-ba-yah like the Oscars would grab its coat collar with two hands and (eventually) recoil as if fearful, enraged, or repulsed by a slap. Being completely honest, that reaction alone is arguably one of the best jokes to come out of Oscar night 2022.
And here we are: Faced with a collective experience that intersects at wealth, race, love, marriage, and artistic license. All of a sudden America gets a pop quiz on what our values absolutely need to be even at shows where people get paid to pretend on camera, but don’t worry, the committee has come up with a cheat sheet for you:
- Don’t “slap the taste out” anyone’s mouth no matter what they say.
- Misdemeanor assault is for poor people. So, maybe do slap the taste out of anyone’s mouth but just be rich while you do it, ok? Bourgeoisie on 3! Break!
Honestly, it’s not the worst cheat sheet. It’s arguably ridiculous, not to mention hypocritical, however, it is not the worst cheat the Oscars keeps up its sleeve: Something Will Smith and Chris Rock both know intimately. Are there 10 strangers you could put in a room that would have been in sync on this before Will slapped the spit out of Rock’s mouth at the Oscars? Doubtful. The mixed reaction to “the Slap” in real-time tells the story. Anti-violence rhetoric from Hollywood, California of all places on planet Earth is as rich as it gets. There is no industry that glorifies violent imagery more unflinchingly, more obsessively, and more profitably than America’s film and media. Through every horrific act they stuff into a movie, the message is reiterated: When the American appetite for violence abates, rest easy, the flame is fanned in no time by the next guy in the next movie where the next 85 guys get their bones broken or your money back! Sure, your little nephew will see it and become just a little more desensitized to violence but don’t worry, it’s not like we internalize repeated imagery or anything. We. Do not. Stand. For. Violence…past the end of the show because that slap actually sent the ratings TO THE MOON!
To step away from sarcastic derision for one brief moment, this is not an endorsement of anything that led up to the 2022 Oscars or happened at the event. I’m just here for quick glance at some delicious ass hypocrisy in the aftermath. We’ve seen how public opinion of “non-violent” agendas has swayed historically. America is possibly the most bizarrely violent pocket of the world. The phenomenon of an activists murdered despite their pacifistic nature, then celebrated for it in pop culture post-mortem has followed us well into the 21st Century. This exists all over, with a special home in the USA. We still lean on caricatures of violent culture we’ve sought to replicate, echos from a version of “us” we swear we’re better than but can’t seem to split from. I see blaming outside forces for our continued disposition as unproductive. At some point we need to take collective responsibility for the culture we’ve propped up, and until that collective action takes place with a shift in actual value (not just some actor’s post-Oscar daytime interview, podcast, IG post, tweet, or editorial) I’m not buying this clout chasing. The irony that it’s Hollywood that wags the finger at physical altercation or insensitivity is the cherry on top. An “A-list” comedian who just got re-exposed for giggling as he effectively begs his peers to “Say nigga!” with him live on his podcasts says Will Smith doesn’t understand comedy. A New Years Eve hostess for a major network, notorious for trying to grab her then co-host by the dick live on television says Will Smith went too far at the Oscars. Another says what Smith did was beautiful. The either/or train of thought keeps a lot of good things alive and lets us focus on building an even better future, but the harsh dichotomy can also limit us. Chris Rock says, “It wasn’t even a bad one!” knowing he could have gone much harder considering all the material the Smith’s provide for public consumption. Who gets to decide? If it’s all the same I’ll remain in the grey on this shit. And for those of us still confused: Yes, having some spouse’s name in your mouth precipitously increases the chances that their other half may raise their hand up to yours at high velocity. Also, this person may or may not have experience professionally embodying Muhammad Ali, but that’s neither here nor there. Hands do travel. Yes, even at the Oscars.
